


A Griever's True Form

by astralpenguin



Category: The Maze Runner (Movies), The Maze Runner Series - All Media Types
Genre: Attempt at Humor, Crack, Crack Treated Seriously, Gen, Mostly Canon Compliant, TMR Discord Anniversary, except for one tiny detail, there's a small hint towards newtmas bc i can't help myself, thomas and minho spend the night in the maze
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-04
Updated: 2019-02-04
Packaged: 2019-10-21 14:56:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,934
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17644961
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/astralpenguin/pseuds/astralpenguin
Summary: “No one’s ever seen one and lived to tell about it. But they’re out there.”Thomas and Minho get trapped in the Maze overnight, and come face to face with a Griever for the first timeWhat they see shocks them





	A Griever's True Form

**Author's Note:**

> i'd like to say that this isn't my fault, but it is actually mostly my fault lmao. there is an explanation i promise

"No one’s ever survived a night in the maze.”

Newt turned away from him and drank from the jar of Gally’s mystery brew.

“What happens to them?” the boy asked.

Newt didn’t answer his question right away. Instead, he put the jar down and stared straight ahead, apparently mulling over the best way to respond.

Part of him wanted to take the question back, thinking that maybe he’d be better off not knowing, but he knew better than to do that. He was stuck here, so he needed to know what was up.

And besides, Newt was the only person he’d met so far who’d been willing to tell him anything at all. He wasn’t going to waste this opportunity.

“Well,” said Newt, looking towards the wall in the distance, “we call them Grievers.” He paused, letting that statement sink in. “Of course,” he continued, still not looking at him as he spoke, “No one’s ever seen one and lived to tell about it. But they’re out there.”

He didn’t know how to respond to that. He wanted to ask more about what exactly these ‘Grievers’ were, what they knew about them, what they did to people, but he couldn’t think of a suitable way of putting these questions into words. And the look on Newt’s face told him that these questions might not be very well received, either.

Newt had been here a long time. It didn’t take a genius to figure out that Newt had probably known people that had been killed by the Grievers. The last thing that he wanted to do was add to that pain.

So he kept quiet.

“Right, well, that’s enough questions for one night, come on,” said Newt, turning to face him properly once more. “You’re supposed to be the guest of honour!”

He weakly protested, but figured it was only fair if Newt wanted to drag him around the party and give him an unofficial tour of the Glade. Newt _had_ just put up with a lot of questions, after all.

And besides, the serious expression that had appeared on Newt’s face during the Griever conversation had been replaced with a smile, and somehow he knew that he wanted to make sure that Newt never stopped smiling.

 

Later, when the sound of screaming coming from the Maze signalled the end of the party, Thomas decided that he’d be happy if he never had to see a Griever.

 

(If only he’d known what kind of person he was)

 

“Good job,” said Minho, breathing heavily from the exertion. “You just killed yourself.”

“What?” said Thomas.

Minho didn’t respond. He let himself collapse the rest of the way to the floor and leant up against the Maze wall. He and Alby were still a good few paces from the door, where Thomas was, but Thomas could clearly hear Minho panting, trying to get his breath back.

Thomas stood and walked towards them, crouching next to where Alby was lying on the ground. “What happened to him?” he asked.

“What does it look like?” Minho snapped. “He got stung.”

“What happened to his head?”

Minho took a deep breath. “I did what I had to do.”

Thomas looked over his shoulder towards Minho. Minho was staring at the ground, still breathing heavily.

If Alby’s actions when stung were anything like Ben’s had been, then Minho had been lucky to be able to knock Alby out before any real damage could’ve been done. It occurred to Thomas then that this was the second one of Minho’s friends to be stung by a Griever in as many days. And now Minho was trapped in the Maze at night, all previous experience pointing towards this meaning that it was only a matter of time before the Grievers got to him, too.

A scratchy, almost mechanical sounding roar came from the distance.

Minho pushed himself to his feet.

“Okay,” said Thomas, looking back down at Alby. “Okay, help me get him up.”

“We gotta go,” said Minho. “The Maze is already changing.”

“Hey Minho!”

Minho had already taken a couple of steps away by this point, but stopped.

“We can’t just leave him here,” said Thomas.

Minho slowly turned to face him. “What else are we supposed to do?”

“Just help me,” said Thomas, placing Alby’s arm around his neck and starting to lift him up.

Minho shook his head, but bent down to help. Between them they were able to carry Alby without too much of a struggle.

“Now what?”

Thomas looked around. The walls around them were plain concrete that went up as high as he could see, but further away from the doors he could see ivy growing on them. An idea began forming in his head. “We could hide him?”

“Hide him?” Minho sounded completely unimpressed. “Hide him where? Take a look around, shuck-face. There’s nowhere to go.”

“How strong is that ivy?” asked Thomas, nodding towards it.

“You don’t get it,” said Minho, ignoring his question. “We’re already dead.”

“Minho, the ivy, how strong is it?”

Minho threw his free hand in the air. “It’s pretty strong, what does it matter? Doesn’t make a difference to us.”

“Reckon it could hold his weight?”

Minho looked confused for a second before he figured out what Thomas was getting at. He nodded. “Yeah,” he said. “It can hold his weight.”

Walking while holding Alby up was a lot harder than just standing while holding him, but they managed it. They reached the nearest section of wall with a good amount of ivy on it relatively quickly. They worked together to find the pieces of ivy that were adjustable from the ground and tied Alby to them. All the while, they could hear the distant screams of the Grievers.

They were getting louder.

Thomas and Minho grabbed hold of the other ends of these strands of ivy and pulled on them as hard as they could. Then they adjusted their grip and did it again. It was a lot harder than Thomas had thought it would be, but they were making progress.

Somewhere close by, one of the Maze walls shifted, and Minho froze.

“What are you doing? Hey, come on, what are you doing?” said Thomas, hoping for Minho to snap out of it and focus back on the task at hand.

“We gotta go,” said Minho, voice quiet and urgent. “We gotta go now!”

“No,” said Thomas, “no just a little more and then we’ll tie it off, okay?”

There was a growling sound, a lot closer than any of the Griever noises had been before.

“Minho stay with me,” said Thomas as he pulled on the vine. “Stay with me Minho. Just a little more, we’re almost there.”

“I’m sorry Greenie.”

“What?”

But instead of responding, Minho dropped the vine and sprinted away.

Thomas swung forwards and had to push himself away from the wall.

There was no way he was going to be able to get Alby any further up on his own, so the height they’d managed to get him to would just have to do. He tied the vine he was holding to some of the others around and carefully let it go.

It held.

He heard a scuttling sound and dove back towards the wall, hiding himself behind the ivy itself.

The ivy was dense enough that he didn’t have a clear view of the Maze corridor. Whatever was out there, he couldn’t get a good look at it.

But there was _something._

There was some definitely movement, at least. And Thomas was sure that it wasn’t Minho.

Thomas held his breath until he was sure that whatever it was was gone.

There was a chance that, if he stayed put, he’d be able to dodge the Grievers until the morning. It didn’t seem like they were checking under the ivy, and it was probably the only thing that passed for a decent hiding place in the whole Maze.

But what if he was spotted? Or heard? He’d be putting Alby in danger if he stayed there.

Maybe he could make some noise somewhere else in the Maze, and _then_ hide? That way the Grievers would be drawn away from Alby and hopefully still wouldn’t find him.

But what about Minho?

For all Thomas knew, Minho could’ve been killed already. He couldn’t rely on Minho’s movements to draw the Grievers away from this location.

Briefly hating himself for thinking about Minho’s survival in that way, Thomas extracted himself from the ivy, faced the direction that led away from the doors, and began to run.

Left, right, right, straight, left, right, left, left.

He hit a dead end but didn’t let himself stop.

He spun around and began to run the other way, only to see movement up ahead.

He slowed, but didn’t stop moving.

He couldn’t afford to stop moving.

Gradually, the thing ahead got close enough that he could see it.

There wasn’t much light in the Maze, which must’ve been the only reason why he hadn’t spotted the thing earlier. Thomas knew that if there’d been a bit more light around then there wouldn’t have been any way that he could miss it.

The thing was small, about the same size as a hamster. For the most part it looked like a ball of fluff.

A ball of vibrant pink fluff.

A ball of vibrant pink fluff that had sparkly limbs sticking out that it scuttled along on.

Thomas had no idea what he was looking at, but he was sure that this couldn’t be a Griever. There was no way. From what he’d heard, both about the Grievers and from the Grievers themselves, he’d been picturing something a lot bigger. And a lot less pink.

Then the small ball of pink sparkly fluff noticed him.

It stopped moving.

Two tiny beads of black appeared through the pink fluff. Thomas could only assume these were its eyes.

And then the thing screamed.

Thomas couldn’t see its mouth, but the screeching sound was so loud that it could only have come from something in the same general area as the pink sparkly fluffball. And it was the sound of a Griever.

The pink sparkly fluffball was a Griever.

The pink sparkly fluffball was one of the things that had stung Ben and Alby, had killed multiple people, and that Minho was scared shitless of.

_“No one’s ever seen one and lived to tell about it.”_

As the Griever in front of him finished off its scream, Thomas saw the darkness further behind it start to move.

Another pink sparkly fluffball appeared next to the first. Then another appeared, and another. More and more of them started to arrive, until the Maze corridor ahead of Thomas was completely full of them.

They all stared at Thomas, their tiny black eyes fixated entirely on him.

The sight of them crowded together like this made Thomas a lot more able to believe in what they were capable of.

Then they began to move towards him.

Thomas took a step backwards.

The swarm of Grievers picked up the pace.

Thomas turned around and began to run.

He knew that he was headed towards a dead end, but it wasn’t like he could head _towards_ the Grievers. If it had just been one, he could’ve gotten past it easily, but there were so many of them that he couldn’t count. It was just a sea of pink.

He’d have to climb the vines or something. They were strong enough to hold Alby, after all. And there was a chance that the Grievers couldn’t climb the walls. It didn’t look like they should be able to. They only had really short limbs.

Short, pink and sparkly limbs.

But as Thomas approached the dead end, arms out in front of him ready to grab the vines, the wall began to shift. A gap opened to one side.

By the time Thomas reached it, the gap was just big enough for him to slide through. So he did.

He kept running, chancing the occasional glance behind him. The wall had continued to slowly open behind him, so the flow of Grievers hadn’t been stemmed by a massively noticable amount. And they were gaining on him.

These things were faster than they had any right to be.

It was during one such glance backwards that Thomas collided with something closer to his own size.

“Hey, this way, come on,” said Minho, grabbing Thomas’ arm and pulling him off to the right.

Getting his feet back under him, Thomas stuck with Minho down the next few corridors.

Straight, left, left, straight, right, straight.

Up ahead a wall started to move, started to turn the corridor they were in into a dead end. Thomas could tell when Minho spotted what was happening because he somehow managed to speed up.

“Come on!” he yelled back. “We can make it!”

Thomas wasn’t so sure, but he put all his effort into lengthening his strides and running as fast as he could.

If he didn’t reach the closing wall in time then he was doomed.

Minho got to the other side, slowed to a stop, and turned around.

“You can do it! Faster!”

Thomas had to turn to the side to be able to fit through the quickly closing gap. Minho reached out, grabbed Thomas’ wrist, and gave him a sharp tug.

Both boys ended up sprawled on the ground, gasping for breath.

The wall shut with a deafening boom.

When Thomas was almost convinced that he wasn’t about to pass out from exhaustion, he pushed himself onto his knees and looked back at the now closed wall. He wasn’t expecting to see anything of interest. If the Grievers had managed to get through, then they’d have attacked already. He and Minho would be dead. They didn’t have the energy to fight or run anymore.

But on the ground, right where the join was between the two walls, was a sparkly pink ball of fluff.

It was writhing, almost as if it were in pain.

Thomas felt around him, and his fist closed around a rock.

He smashed the rock down on top of the Griever.

It stopped moving.

“Did you just kill it?” asked Minho.

“I hope so,” Thomas responded, carefully getting a closer look.

One of the creature’s limbs had gotten stuck between the walls. It was probably safe to assume that a few of the little shits had been completely flattened.

Thomas was too tired to be satisfied about it.

“Was that all of them?” asked Thomas.

“How should I know?” Minho shook his head, and got to his feet. “We can’t stay here anyway, they’ll be finding a way around. We need to be long gone by then.” He reached down, offering a hand to Thomas.

Thomas took it, letting Minho help him up. “You know where we are?”

Minho nodded. “We’re about four miles from the East door. You good?”

“Honestly?” Thomas laughed. “Not really. But you’re right, we’ve got to move.”

He looked down at the dead Griever one last time.

“How many were there? When Alby got stung?”

“Just one,” said Minho. “We didn’t realise that it was a Griever until it was too late. It stung him and scurried off before I could do anything about it.”

“I was picturing something bigger.”

“So was I, Greenie. So was I.”

 

When Thomas and Minho got back into the Glade, Alby safely with them, they didn’t need to do much more than look at each other to agree that telling the other Gladers that the dreaded Grievers were pink and sparkly might not be the best idea.

Small? Not a problem.

Prone to swarming? Absolutely fine.

But if they added the colour into the description then they probably wouldn’t get taken seriously. And the Gladers needed to stay aware of just how dangerous these creatures were.

 

“It’s pink?”

Thomas didn’t see exactly which of the small group who’d gone with them into the Maze to retrieve the Griever’s body said that, but it could’ve been any of them.

“It’s fluffy too,” said Winston. “And it’s sparkly.” He turned to Thomas. “You sure this is a Griever?”

“It’s what’s got Alby shucked up in the Medjack hut right now,” said Minho, before Thomas could respond. “So yeah I’d say it’s a Griever. Its looks are probably meant to be deceiving, make you let your guard down. Then by the time you realise what a mistake that was it’d be too late to run.”

Frypan knelt and pulled the Griever free from the wall. Something silver fell from his grasp, and Thomas picked it up.

It was a small metal disc. If Thomas didn’t know better, he’d have said that it had come off a dog’s collar. And like a dog’s collar, it had a word stamped into it.

_‘Cranky’_

“Huh,” said Frypan, peering over Thomas’ shoulder at the disc. “Looks like the Griever had a name.”

“Why would a Griever have a name?” asked Zart.

“What is it?” asked Winston.

“Cranky,” said Thomas.

“Well that’s a ridiculous name,” said Zart, shaking his head.

Winston stifled a laugh.

“We’ve got what we came for,” said Minho. “Let’s not be here any longer than we need to be.”

The boys agreed, and they all started their journey back to the Glade.

 

Nobody was laughing when the doors to the Glade didn’t close.

At least, nobody who laughed survived the massacre.

The massacre at the hands of a swarm of tiny sparkly pink fluffy Grievers.

**Author's Note:**

> i mainly wrote this as an anniversary gift for the tmr discord !!! the server was created a year ago today, and i can genuinely say that the people on it have become some of my closest friends, asking for a link to that place was one of the best decisions i've ever made and i'm so so happy it exists !!! i love you all !!!
> 
> comments and kudos make me super super happy
> 
> you can find me on tumblr [here](https://astralpenguin.tumblr.com/)


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